I've got a pretty good, even-handed book on Waco if you'd like to borrow it, BTW, Joanna.

It was, indeed, messed up from one end to the other.

Still, if you believe that some apocalyptic cult is stocking up on guns because they fear the power of satanic government in the end times, then acting all satanic probably ain't the way to defuse the situation.

I've not heard enough solid intelligience on the latest attempt to make us all safe to have any opinion. It does seem the group might have colored outside the lines by trying to get some boom boom material. do not know is the leader had read Patriots or not.

Having police that are not a part of the community they are trying to police is never a good idea. On the other hand, if you do not want to take resposibility for the bust, having an outside group remove the cancer is not a bad idea.

The BD's were weird, that's for sure and certain. But being weird isn't a federal crime.

Maybe they were a cult, but last time I checked that wasn't illegal either.

Maybe Koresh was a sick puppy and a kiddy diddler. If so, try him and convict him. Hell, you can burn him alive too...after the trial. I just fail to see how shooting, gassing, and burning every single one of his alleged victims along with the rest of their families is advancing the cause of justice.

People should be able to live and worship as they please without the feds coming to kill them in their beds with tanks and gunships.

I would love to be within speaking distance of Janet Reno. 4 hours in an elevator might be enough time to explain to her just how much of a fascist pig she is.

"The BD's were weird, that's for sure and certain. But being weird isn't a federal crime."

Best I can tell, the only really solid charge against them from the jump was engaging in the business without an FFL. This was the early days of the AR boom, and if I remember correctly, they were buying stripped lowers on a friend's off-premises FFL, assembling completed guns, and then selling them sans paperwork at gun shows, or that was the charge.

The correct thing to do would have been to arrest Koresh off premises or serve a warrant through the local Sheriff, but they wanted to do a big telegenic raid for budget-boosting purposes and let a bunch of guys with marginal qualifications get to play with their SWAT gear, and we all know how things went from there...

On the charge of selling paperless MGs, I vaguely recall the same company that pieced together the Space Shuttle Challenger after it's accident and concluded that the chopped up O-rings were the offending party, offered to Congress to x-ray the alleged MGs for any offending select-fire shears and such parts, and were told "thanks, but no thanks."

I just fail to see how shooting, gassing, and burning every single one of his alleged victims along with the rest of their families is advancing the cause of justice.

You talk like that's what they went in intending to do. Again, just because the LEOs did something wrong, it doesn't make the victims innocent. Cults are weird, weird things, especially this one; like I said, I don't think there's a "good guy" in that story.

Koresh once wrote that a girl's heart "was beating like a scared rabbit's" while he had sex with her. She was 13.

Even if we take that Koresh was engaged in cultic baby-raping as a given, it disturbs me that those charges weren't tacked on until after the BATFEIEIO had already dropped the ball.

If that had been the major thrust of things on the LE front, then the initial warrants should have been state or local in nature and the feds could have come in after the dust settled and tacked federal weapons charges on at their leisure, rather than the vice versa nature of the actual affair.

Instead, we got an incompetently-handled F-troop raid which, after it was botched and turned into a siege, had a mess of additional charges added on in a seeming afterthought. This does nothing but cheapen the validity of the malum in se crimes by using them as post facto props for the malum prohibitum charges of the initial warrant. :(

I've read that Koresh invited the Feds to go shooting with him, and they did, using ammo he provided. There was another book too, by Kopel or or somebody," What's wrong with Federal Law Enforcement, and How to Fix It." I think. I used to own a copy before I lost most of my stuff.